“Cymbal Covered in Sugar” by ChefSteps

In December 2012, ChefSteps co-founder and photographer Ryan Mathew Smith rented a Phantom Flex High-Speed Camera with one goal in mind: Film as many culinary exploits that have the potential to look awesome on film in three days. During this period of time, I had been assisting Ryan and the rest of the team with anything I could to get great shot, when I randomly thought about the idea of vibration on high speed film.

I called up my friend and former drummer Will Andrews to see if I could borrow some drums and see what random kitchen substances on the would look like on film when struck. The idea I had comes from my love of Cymatics, a vibrational phenomenon caused by sound generators that create symmetrical and intricate pattens in different substances when set up in a specific fashion.

After Ryan edited the footage together, I was given the task to score the music of the strike I made on this poor cymbal (it survived). I used a combination of drum libraries and real percussion, real cymbals and cymbal libraries, as well as a guitar being played only with its harmonics. I also used a sample of a cymbal I hit and time manipulated it to reflect and amplify the time stretching effect used in the footage.